This Black Friday, U.S. online shopping hit a record — but the story isn’t just higher spending. It’s a turning point: AI-powered agents, smarter search tools, and shifting consumer behavior have accelerated a change that’s been quietly building for years. At VibePostAI, where we build tools and experiences around generative AI and prompt-driven workflows, this evolution feels less like a trend — and more like a new baseline.
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From Clicks to Cart — How Black Friday Became Online-First
Black Friday has long been synonymous with crowded parking lots, early-morning lines and door-buster deals. But over the last two decades, shopping habits steadily shifted online. Data from the U.S. Census and independent researchers shows that the share of online retail sales grew from well under 1% in the late 1990s to more than 12% by 2019 — before the pandemic even began.
COVID-19 then acted as an accelerant. In the second quarter of 2020, U.S. e-commerce sales jumped by more than 50% year over year as lockdowns pushed everyday spending online. Even when physical stores reopened, the online share never returned to pre-pandemic levels. By the end of 2022, roughly one in six retail dollars in the U.S. was being spent online, signaling a lasting change in consumer behavior rather than a temporary spike.
Black Friday followed the same trajectory. In 2024, online sales for the day reached an estimated $10.8 billion, according to Adobe Analytics — a record at the time and a clear sign that Black Friday had become an online-first event rather than just a brick-and-mortar ritual built around door-buster deals.
2025 Black Friday: Record Spend — and an AI Boom
In 2025, that record didn’t just fall — it was reshaped. Adobe estimates that U.S. consumers spent $11.8 billion online on Black Friday this year, a 9.1% increase over 2024 and the highest single-day online sales figure on record for the U.S. holiday season.
The bigger story is what drove that growth. Adobe’s data indicates that AI-driven traffic to retail sites surged 805% compared with last year, based on tracking over a trillion visits across major U.S. retailers. That spike coincides with the rollout of new AI shopping assistants and agent-style tools from large retail platforms — systems that help users compare products, find discounts and move more quickly from intent to checkout.
Mastercard SpendingPulse figures tell a similar story: online sales climbed more than 10% on Black Friday 2025, while in-store sales grew by less than 2%. Even against a backdrop of inflation and cautious consumer sentiment, digital channels — especially those augmented by AI — continued to pull ahead.
What’s Changing — Beyond Just Numbers
The 2025 surge isn’t just about bigger wallets or deeper deals. It reflects structural shifts in how people shop — shifts that started long before AI entered the picture. Mobile commerce is one of them. By 2023, smartphones already accounted for more than half of Black Friday e-commerce transactions, turning the phone into the default shopping device for millions of people.
What’s new now is the role of AI agents in that journey. Instead of manually browsing lists, opening dozens of tabs and cross-checking specs, shoppers can increasingly ask an AI to do the work for them: search across catalogues, filter by price and rating, surface the best deals, and even drop items directly into a cart. That shift turns product descriptions, metadata and tags into first-class infrastructure — not just for human readers, but for the models and agents that interpret them.
What This Means for Retailers, Creators & AI-Driven Platforms
For retailers, AI agents are already reshaping visibility and conversion. Product pages that once only needed to persuade humans now also need to be legible to models. Clear structure, high-quality metadata and consistent taxonomies become competitive advantages when AI is scanning entire catalogues on behalf of shoppers. This is the early shape of what some in the industry are calling Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).
For creators, designers and prompt-engineers on platforms like VibePostAI, it’s a turning point. Prompts, workflows and agent-ready instructions are becoming reusable assets that sit behind these shopping experiences. Whether it’s a system prompt that defines how an AI compares products or a reusable workflow for surfacing the best deals in a niche category, the underlying prompt design is starting to matter as much as traditional copywriting and UX.
That’s likely to fuel demand for curated prompt libraries, shareable agent blueprints and prompt-to-checkout flows — the kind of building blocks communities are already experimenting with inside VibePostAI. As more AI shopping agents enter the market, the invisible infrastructure of prompts and workflows could become as critical as the products themselves.
A Look Ahead: What to Watch in 2026 and Beyond
AI-driven personalization will deepen. As agents learn more about user preferences and constraints, they’ll move from responding to queries to anticipating needs — from “find me a TV under $500” to quietly monitoring prices and nudging when the right deal appears.
Retail metadata and UX will need to adapt. Product pages designed only for human eyes may not translate cleanly to AI parsers. Expect more investment in structured data, richer attributes and cleaner information architecture aimed at both people and models.
Creator-led ecosystems will matter more than ever. Platforms like VibePostAI — where prompt design, community feedback and AI-native tooling intersect — are well-positioned to become the place where these shopping agents, workflows and ideas are prototyped and shared.
Balance between innovation and trust will be key. As AI agents grow more powerful, transparency and user control have to stay central. Guardrails are important, but overly heavy-handed regulation risks stifling experimentation and concentrating power in a few closed ecosystems instead of supporting a more open, creator-driven landscape.
The 2025 Black Friday record isn’t just a number. It marks the moment online shopping crossed from “nice to have” to “smart, agent-powered default.” For builders, creators and anyone betting on where the internet is going next — including us at VibePostAI — the message is clear: AI is no longer optional. It’s already reshaping commerce, user behavior and the way digital experiences are designed.
For more in-depth discussions on prompts, agent workflows and AI-native tools — and how they intersect with commerce and creative building — visit
VibePostAI.com.
Sources
- Online shopping growth and retail share data – Pew Research Center / U.S. Census retail series.
- Black Friday e-commerce performance – Adobe Analytics and reporting via Digital Commerce 360.
- 2025 Black Friday online sales and AI-driven traffic – Adobe Analytics estimates reported by Reuters.
- Online vs in-store Black Friday growth – Mastercard SpendingPulse figures reported by Reuters.
- Mobile’s share of Black Friday transactions – industry analysis and breakdowns from Digital Commerce 360 and related e-commerce reports.